No sooner did I state in a recent review of the Jerry Garcia Plays Dylan CD-“I expect the flow of live material to keep coming from the vaults of the Grateful Dead,” then do I find myself holding this gem. Fillmore West-1969 is a moment frozen in time, and a spectacular one at that. To think that the Dead had only a few studio albums behind them at the time, and they would only get better simply amazes me.

What I heard on these three CDs was an incredible live band totally in command of their presentation. Their ability to improvise would make every live show they ever performed an entirely different experience. For this very reason, the resulting floodgates have opened to countless live recordings. And there is certainly enough fans of the Dead worldwide more than willing to gobble them up as soon as they hit the streets, legitimate or bootlegged, it does not seem to matter.

Rhino makes every effort to impress by offering Dead Heads a beautifully put together package. The three CDs come housed in a heavy duty cardboard mini book style case, which includes several pictures in both black and white and color from the era, an excellent write up, a picture of the original hand written set list, and each CD comes in a quality sleeve with nice b/w shots of each band member. Those are the bonuses. The music is unbelievable.

As my education continues regarding the Grateful Dead and their amazing guitarist, Jerry Garcia, my fascination and hunger for their music increases. Now I finally understand how this band created an entire culture by themselves with their legendary live shows. Monster jams like “That's It for the Other One” run for nearly 24 minutes, almost equal to an album’s worth of music (based on LP day standards).

Normally if I hear a song that goes on for that long there is some flash, pompousness and boredom. Never have I experienced this listening to the Dead. Every song is a journey within itself and it was because they had this guy named Garcia that could take them down any road he chose. I know I place a lot of the focus on Garcia and that is probably not fair. The rest of people in the band were equally talented; they had to be, otherwise jams would never develop as they did.

The Grateful Dead invented the term jam band, and they clearly defined it every time they took the stage. Just one listen to a magnificent set like this on their home turf in San Francisco tells the story.